Hi, The most recent discussion I found about this: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2016-09/msg00015.html
It's definitely currently never. https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/cp.c#L796 However for mv, it is used (which I understand it's a different thing, the optimization for cp+rm makes even more sense than for cp alone). https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/mv.c#L113 Thanks, -- Chris Murphy
